Tools, Dials & unexpected Levers

Month: October 2017

Emil Cioran was a Romanian writer and philosopher. He is famous for writing books such as The Trouble with Being Born. As you can guess, it’s very tormented and pessimistic.

William H. Gass called Cioran’s work “a philosophical romance on the modern themes of alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease”.

Thomas Bernhard was a Austrian “novelist, playwright and poet”. His style is mainly about monologues reported to a listener (you?). It’s very intense, full of anger and a bit disturbing. His books’ titles are like Extinction or Concrete.

“Bernhard’s prose is lapidary and translucent in its vocabulary, but sinuous and formidably dense in its phrasing”.

Yes, you can take all this very seriously.

I’ve known a couple of young men who read Cioran as an obsession, like a Master of pessimism : “The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live –moreover, the only one.”. And why not?

And I admit I read my first Thomas Bernhard with frowny eyes. “Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it’s lost.”

Then… you grow up, you study the way they write (one in archipelagos, the other one in words rivers), you begin to notice their ways, their exaggerations, their… wizardry, their understanding, their contradictions.

Then you smile.

Then you LAUGH…

I agree, it’s a strange laugh. It would be a bit short to say it’s sarcastic, because it’s not. Sometimes humor sticks out with a whole harp of powers. You laugh but you think, you laugh but you sob, you laugh but you have empathy, you laugh but you’re deeply moved, you laugh and you want to get out of your house to run like hell out in the streets, full of seeds, anger, and new ideas…

You just needed to make progress until you have the capacity to “get it”.

Where does it happen, when you have to “find the fun”? How would you make it? When do things have like this, many doors? Why should humor move with this flag : “This is humor”?? Can (and do you need to) you invent and trace humor on something which is “obviously” not funny?

Isn’t it a lesson? Like… maybe we have to find a possible way to laugh after our months of deep despair?
Thanks for reading!

Like this:

“At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.”― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

When you move in with your lover, do you merge your books collections or not? Why?

I can’t really read Art Books : as soon as I’m on my armchair, my cat Bidou jumps on my lap – no place for the book, errr…

Whatever : in this delicious autumn feeling, under pullovers and cardigans, with two scarves already, I read a great book about Goya, the Spanish painter, with my cat on my legs, with a glass of Morgon (yep it’s a French wine). What else?

The only true aristocracy is that of consciousness.

D. H. Lawrence

“We know what to do, but we do not do”, says a character in the movie Ma Loute. Isn’t it Tolstoian?

Imagine you live near a volcano, or in a city which has been destroyed by earthquakes before : do you have a suitcase of “I take this in case of destruction”? What would you put inside?

“Three Worst” :

What is the worst demon? The Family Destroyer.

The worse things happen when people stop talking to each other.

I wonder what’s the worst : to be hurt by someone on purpose, or to be hurt by someone who has no clue…

The loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist!

Like this:

If you decide to explore a field, you can take the highway : choose the best selling hits & jewels and study them. Mona Lisa for Da Vinci, The Bolero for Ravel, Citizen Kane for Welles. La Recherche for Proust…

Main entrance…

This morning I read the interview of a pianist who recorded the works of Sibelius for piano – yet this composer is mainly known for his symphonic works.

This year, in France, there’s a new coffee-table book named Le Dernier Tableau (“The Last Painting”). As you can guess : it’s a surprising book. The last painting each painter did before death – is showed and described with interesting developments (Is it premonitory? Is there a new freedom? Do you see silly risks, or dejection?).

You see me coming, right?

An “other” way to study something is to find the lateral doors. Other fields, where the Master is weaker, or more casual. Minor works. Last sparkles (or awkward beginnings).